by Logan Gruber
operations@thenewsleaders.com
A street the city has been interested in taking back from Stearns County for quite awhile finally returned to city care-taking on Jan. 1.
At the Dec. 7 St. Joseph city council meeting, Stearns County engineer Jodi Teich came to the council with an offer: the county would pay the city $75,000 for future upkeep costs, and the county would return Minnesota Street from CR 2 to College Avenue, and College Avenue from Minnesota Street to Hwy 75. The county currently owns and operates those portions which were part of old CR 2.
While the city was interested in the deal, they had originally wanted more than $100,000, as precedent of the taking back of roads from the state has at times been to take them back in the original condition of the road. Minnesota Street is in need of repair in the near future, though the county did repair some sections near downtown recently.
“We can’t come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Teich said to the council. “We can maybe come up with $15-20,000 more . . . we spent a significant amount of money on the CR 2 bypass, the signal at CR 2 and Hwy 75 and the conflict warning system at CR 2 and Minnesota Street. Minnesota Street is seeing less truck traffic than ever, so deterioration will be slower.”
Eventually the two parties agreed to turn back the two road portions for a $95,000 payment to the city.
The county board approved the payment at its Dec. 15 meeting.
